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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984188">Suptober Day 12: Rewind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv'>tiamatv</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Promptober 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Day At The Beach, Domesticity, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Retired Hunter Winchesters (Supernatural), Sam Winchester is So Done, Tooth-Rotting Fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:36:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,512</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984188</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Jessica?” Sam calls, on his feet. What— “Jessie?”</p><p>His daughter looks up and over where she’s got her chin snugged on her uncle’s shoulder, her long, wet brown hair draping pathetically over her face and Dean’s back. She meets Sam’s eyes across the distance.</p><p>Then, and only then, does she starts howling.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Promptober 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>247</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Suptober Day 12: Rewind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is not remotely the 'fic I meant to write for this prompt. In fact, I got 3K into writing my original idea before I decided I hated it. It was angsty, it had weird time stuff going on, and I was just not in the mood.</p><p>So instead: have completely tooth-rotting unbetaed fluff, instead.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sam Winchester has been through more, in his forty years of life, than most people dream exist. He doesn’t think it’s a bad thing that most people wouldn’t be able to imagine it, to be honest: most of his life has been more nightmare than dream.</p><p>If no-one else ever has to find out what it’s like to be tortured in Hell, or scrape their palm open to drive away a hallucination of the Devil in their fractured mind, or feel their body going to pieces around them as they swallow more and more infernal power in an attempt to close Hell’s gate, then he’ll consider his existence well-lived. He’s stabbed werewolves and shot giant fly-men, sat up at night to the howls of wendigos, come close to losing more limbs than he actually has to ghosts. He’s lost count of how many vampires he’s relieved of their heads. He’s trying to lose count of how many <em>world-ending events</em> they’ve averted.</p><p>In all the world, Sam thinks there’s no sound as unique and as <em>terrifying</em> as hearing his three-year-old daughter scream.</p><p>He sits bolt-upright on his beach towel and rockets out of his doze, almost braining himself on the edge of the beach umbrella that Cas set up to the side. The book he left flopped open on his chest when he fell asleep—Tom Clancy—falls and and nearly stabs him in the thigh with a corner of the heavy hardback. The little damp towel he draped over his eyes earlier tangles over his nose and he swats it away. Adrenaline has Sam Winchester up and on the balls of his feet, hand clutching for a knife he doesn’t even carry anymore, almost before he realizes—remembers—there’s sand squishing under his toes.</p><p>Just over the edge of the shell-lined dropoff between where the dry sand and the wet meet, he can see Jessie’s bright neon pink and orange bathing suit. (The thing hurts his eyes, but Eileen let her pick for herself, and, well. She’s three.)</p><p>She’s standing. Okay, she’s clutching something to her chest, but she’s standing on her own two feet. He can’t see any blood. Nothing is broken. She's not broken.</p><p>Sam remembers to breathe.</p><p>Dean’s right over her shoulder, and he twists to get around her, graceful because Dean <em>is </em>still, and when things go wrong he still moves like the Hunter he’s spent his life being. He drops to his knees in front of Jessie hard enough that even on the sand it has to hurt. He looks at something between them, and his head shakes, once, quickly. Carefully, Dean gathers her up and lifts her.</p><p>“Jessica?” Sam calls, on his feet. What— “Jessie?”</p><p>(He almost never calls her Jess. Eileen does, though. That’s alright, Sam thinks. That’s alright, somehow—Eileen picked the name, after all.)</p><p>His daughter looks up and over where she’s got her chin snugged on her uncle’s shoulder, her long, wet brown hair draping pathetically over her face and Dean’s back. She meets Sam’s eyes across the distance.</p><p><em>Then, </em>and only then, does she starts howling.</p><p>Okay. Sam sighs and lets his back relax. Tension still twangs along his nerves, but the sun beating down his head reminds him: they’re at the beach. They’re swimming. He’s promised Jessie a sandcastle later. He was reading Tom Clancy (it’s <em>not fun, </em>why does anyone read this? No wonder he fell asleep). Okay, so she’s probably fine.</p><p>It’s lucky they set themselves up at the far edge of the cove, just off where the sea wall starts to rise—the sand is rockier, and there aren’t any of the amenities over in this direction that there are on the more public areas of the beach, so the bathrooms are <em>far</em>. But on the other hand, there’s no-one to comment on Dean and Sam sharing a beer, Jessie getting swung around by her ankles—her favorite thing in the <em>world</em>—or Cas talking to hermit crabs.</p><p>Jessica has actually mostly stopped yelling already by the time she and Dean are close enough for Sam to catch the expression on Dean’s face, but she’s still sniffling and shaking a little, her shoulders hunched and heaving.</p><p>“Wewine,” she whines, clinging to Dean, so upset she isn’t even signing. “<em>Wewine</em>.”</p><p>What? Sam looks at his big brother—Dean looks as pained as she sounds, rubbing a big hand soothingly up and down her back. For all that Dean made sure that both Jessie <em>and</em> Cas remembered sunblock, it looks like he’s either forgotten his own or it washed off when he and Jessie were playing in the water earlier: the freckles on his arms are visible and prominent, and the apples of his cheeks and the tops of his ears are edged with red.</p><p>Sam doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that no-one has ever really recognized them, because there is a grand total of <em>no-one</em> who’d look at the expression on Dean’s face now and think ‘lifelong criminal’ and ‘oh, former demon Knight of Hell’ and ‘used to sew up his little brother and, sometimes, himself, pretty regularly with dental floss.’</p><p>(Admittedly, some of those things are probably more plausible than others.)</p><p>Dean bobs up and down a little, rocking her. His entire face is pinched together, his mouth a thin, blanched line. Even in the warm sunlight, he’s lost color. “Hey, hey,” he says, in a wobbly facsimile of fake cheerfulness. “Hey, you’re okay, pumpkin patch. Look, it’s daddy.”</p><p>Oh, great. Sam curls a lip at Dean, but damn it, he really looks so pathetic. Sam sighs and reaches out his arms.</p><p>Jessie twists to look at him over her shoulder, her long eyelashes matted with tears, and then bursts into big, wet, noisy sobs, leaning away from Dean to fall into Sam’s arms—and almost missing and toppling to the ground, because three-year-olds are about as coordinated as puppies and even <em>more</em> trusting that someone’s going to catch them when they do stupid things like defy gravity. Sam lunges to grab her and almost ends up knocking Dean over.</p><p>(He once told Eileen that Jessie seems to have even less self-preservation instinct than most people. She looked at him down the bridge of her nose and answered, pointedly, “Oh, do you think she got that from somewhere?’)</p><p>He gets Jessica resituated in his arms and his heart rate back in order. Once Sam doesn’t think he’s at risk for dropping her anymore, his arms full of warm, sweaty, sandy little girl who’s got her knees pressing a little too hard into his rib cage, he looks, confused, at his brother. “Okay, what?”</p><p>Dean doesn’t exactly look like he’s about to cry, too, but he’s got that tense set to his shoulders and a hard rise to the line of his jaw that looks too familiar. Self-blame is a very familiar expression on Dean’s face. His green eyes, even in the sunlight, seem brown and hooded. “She was looking for shells. Dam—dangit, I… I told her to leave the broken one alone, but she grabbed it when I turned around to pick her up another one. I shoulda just tossed it into the water when I saw it, or something.”</p><p>Jessie raises her head off his shoulder—Sam braces her between her shoulder blades—and she pronounces, “Wewine, Daddy,” then buries her face again and sniffs. It’s not much of a sniff. Sam can’t feel tears on his shoulder, anyway.</p><p>“We… whine?” Sam asks, blankly. “No, please don’t, Jessie.”</p><p>Dean rubs a hand over his face. “Uh, no. Rewind.” He flashes a tired carbon copy of his normal grin. “It’s, uh, I taught her that, I guess. You know. When things go wrong, you rewind, and you do ‘em again better the next time.”</p><p>Oh. Well, that makes more sense. Dean was a little worried—though no-one else was—that at three Jessie’s still only forming short two- or three-word sentences and still occasionally uses baby-pronunciation, since, as he says, Sam definitely was all sentences when <em>he</em> was three.</p><p>Their pediatrician just laughed, though. “It’s common for bilingual children,” Dr. Varnado answered, at the time, her face pointed carefully in Eileen’s direction, her wide smile rueful. “They get to the same place, but, y’know, they often make up their own grammar on the way there, first.” </p><p>(No-one tells Jessie's nice doctor that the Enochian and Latin salted in there probably don't help. But the fact that Dean remembers how Sam used to talk when he was three, even now, sometimes sends a deep stab under Sam’s breastbone when he looks at his daughter. Dean was <em>seven. </em>He shouldn’t have had to think about those things, not then.)</p><p>But true to form, Dean’s face twists in something like pain as he looks at the hand Jessie’s using to grab and paw at Sam—Sam hasn’t even seen it yet, since she’s clutching at his hair with it.</p><p>“I’m gonna get Cas,” Dean says, his face taut, and before Sam can so much as start to say ‘<em>wait</em>’ he’s off down the sand towards where the rise of the cliff casts the sand in shadow. He’s jogging, which for Dean in sand, with his bad knee, is practically a full out sprint.</p><p>Cas doesn’t have much grace left. He isn’t fading quickly, but his grace definitely <em>is</em> fading away—a little more each week, each month. He sleeps, now, regularly; he eats and drinks, he showers and gets sunburned and yelps when he puts a hand too near the toaster after it’s been running. He seems quiet about it, content, but Sam sure as heck doesn’t think that healing up Jessie’s little bumps and scrapes and bruises is the way he should choose to fade faster.</p><p>But there’s no stopping Dean once he’s on a tear like this, so Sam just shakes his head and suppresses his sigh. For Dean—and for Jessie—Cas’ll do it, too.</p><p>When he lowers his daughter back to her feet, she shows him her hand with a wobble in her lower lip, and Sam’s sigh slips out anyway. Her small, pointed chin is Eileen’s, but everyone says the cheekbones are his. The eyes certainly are—sometimes he’s startled when he looks into them. Sam sincerely hopes he’s never made a face like that, though.</p><p>But the cut on her hand is barely anything—yes, it’s got a smear of blood next to it, but it’s small and shallow: a little scrape that barely broke skin, maybe a centimeter long, across the center of her palm.</p><p>Sam would laugh if he wouldn’t get all three of them, Cas, Dean <em>and</em> Jessie, mad at him. Eileen, though? Eileen’s going to agree with him. They only need so many worrywarts in the house.</p><p>Sam’s pouring a little cool water over the cut, Jessie looking at the bottle with the same adorable brown-eyed suspicion that she uses on the nurses when she thinks there are vaccinations in short order, by the time Cas strides up to them. His white t-shirt is stuck to him with sweat, a little translucent, and he has sand covering him from knees down. It’s crusted on the edge of his blue swim trunks. Dean’s puffing a little, but he’s right on his heels.</p><p>Sam should <em>probably</em> be insulted that Jessie, immediately, turns away from him and sticks her hand pointedly in Cas’s direction. “Look, Unca,” she commands.</p><p>But then again, Cas <em>is</em> the kind of person who deliberately lowers himself to his knees and lifts his sunglasses up to rest them on top of his wind-tousled hair, taking Jessie’s hand between both of his. Dean rocks from heel to toe, then, like he can’t stand to just stand still, hovers.</p><p>“Oh,” Cas said, seriously, turning her hand back and forth. “Oh, I see. Hmm.”</p><p>“Make better?” she asks him, hopefully. “Please.”</p><p>Oh, no. Not her, too. Sam’s stomach twists. They’ve asked <em>so much </em>of Cas, so many times—this is just a little thing, but it’s so unnecessary.</p><p>“Cas, no,” Sam says, quietly. “You really don’t—”</p><p>Cas doesn’t look up from where he’s studying the little wet cut that’s already stopped oozing. “Okay,” he tells Jessie, very solemn. Then he gently kisses her hand, making a soft smack sound at the middle of her palm.</p><p>There’s no flash of light or sense of electricity in the air. Cas’s eyes don’t glow. And when he lowers her hand, the small scrape is still clearly visible across her palm.</p><p>Oh, <em>no</em>. Sam sucks in a sharp little breath. He really didn’t think Cas was that far gone—</p><p>But Cas is smiling—that small, sweet smile that he reserves for animals and small children and, now and again, Dean when he’s being particularly obtuse. “Is that better?” he asks, solicitously.</p><p>Jessie contemplates her hand, then nods firmly. “Thank you, Unca Cas,” she says, very clearly, without a hint of baby to it, and signs with her free hand. “Much better.”</p><p>“Yes,” he agrees, before laying his other hand on top of hers, sandwiching her smaller one between them both. “But you have to be nice to it. So it gets <em>all</em> the way better.”</p><p>Jessie glares at him, still pink-eyed, but fierce: pursing out her lips. “<em>Always </em>nice.”</p><p>Cas, to his credit, doesn’t laugh—even though Sam hears Dean snort from somewhere over his shoulder.</p><p>“Would you like to come walk with me, Jessica?” Cas asks, instead, widening his eyes invitingly. “There are some birds nearby. You can show them how nice you are.”</p><p>When she cocks her head, it’s a <em>perfect</em> match to Cas’s little head tilt. Sam has to bite the inside of his cheek. She really doesn’t like being laughed at. “Damned birbs?” she asks.</p><p>Okay, she didn’t learn <em>that</em> from Cas.</p><p>Sam twists around to glare at where Dean is hovering over his shoulder. Dean doesn’t wince, but he does scratch sheepishly at the back of his neck.</p><p>Cas chuckles, softly. “No, not pigeons. Plovers. Little round birds, in the water. If you’re gentle, maybe they will say hello.”</p><p>Jessie’s eyes go wide. “<em>Wittle</em> ones?” she asks, wonderingly. Her hand goes limp in Cas’s grasp, her previously mortal injury completely forgotten.</p><p>Cas makes a small gap between his thumb and forefinger and brings it up to his face, peering at her through it with one blue eye—his coloration is even more vivid in the sunlight, his hair starting to bleach to lighter brown in spots. He’s golden-tanned all the time, now, with all the time he spends in the garden. “<em>Very</em> little,” he promises. “Even more little than you, Jessica Winchester.”</p><p>“Show me, please,” she says, imperiously.</p><p>Well, at least she said ‘please.’ And she always pronounces that correctly. Though Sam has not yet figured out how Cas can <em>consistently </em>get a ‘please’ from her, and Sam himself gets “NOW!” or a howl as often as not. Probably because Cas shows her cooler things. Like plovers. (He’s the uncle. He can do that. Also, <em>former angel.</em>)</p><p>But Cas, of course, is also the <em>good</em> uncle, the one who actually looks at Sam for permission and waits for him to nod before he starts leading Jessie away. She doesn’t let go of his hand, but she’s signing vigorously and happily with the other one as they wander off, skirting together around a mound of sand like it’s an actual obstacle.</p><p>She’s signing something again about ‘damned birds.’</p><p>Since Sam is <em>very</em> sure that she didn’t learned <em>that </em>particular sign from Dean… yeah, sometimes Sam feels like Jessie getting sent home from preschool is going to be a foregone conclusion at some point. He can fight a battle on one front, but he can’t fight it on two, and Eileen, with how she’s always lived in a hearing world, swears a <em>little</em> too easily when she’s not doing it aloud.</p><p>Dean sighs and wipes a hand down his face. “Look, man, I’m really sorry, I—”</p><p>Sam shakes his head. “It’s fine.” And honestly, Dean seemed like he was the one who’d been the most bothered by it—which was probably <em>exactly</em> why Jessie got so dramatic over a small cut. If Sam had to pick the one person in the world that Jessie can wrap around her little finger as fast as a Winchester can say ‘salt circle’… well, Sam is looking at him. He smiles, though, wryly. “I mean… she’s a kid. It happens! And maybe now she’ll know not to grab things when you tell her not to.”</p><p>Of all the things Dean’s got to be guilty for in their life, this isn’t one of them.</p><p>Dean grunts, but he looks a little less sorry. “I guess.”</p><p>Sam chuckles and claps him on the shoulder. “As long as you don’t try and convince her she’s Superman.”</p><p>Dean snorts. “She likes Batman better,” he answers, proudly.</p><p>Of course she does.</p><p>Sam chuckles, and reaches into the cooler as Dean lowers himself to the towel underneath the beach umbrella with a grunt, casting himself in shadow as he stretches out both of his knees. Sam hands his older brother one of the Coronas and a piece of cut lime, then pops one for himself. Cas’s ginger ale and Jessie’s juice boxes are still cold, and Sam shovels the melting ice over them and the bottles of water before settling back down on his beach towel and sprawling out on his back, leaning up on his elbows.</p><p>Cas, a tall, dark-haired shape in blue swim shorts and a white t-shirt, crouches down at the water’s edge off to the right, near the looming cliff face. Sam’s daughter squats down beside him, her bright pink bathing suit and neon orange waders like a beacon. Sam can’t see the plovers Cas was talking about, but he doesn’t doubt for a moment that they’re there. Cas might only be half angel now, as he puts it, but he still very much has his Cinderella powers; he was probably communing with the little wading birds before Dean went to fetch him.</p><p>They’re just at the edge of where the water’s coming and going in quiet, shushing waves, but Sam’s not worried. Even from here he can tell Cas has still got her hand.</p><p>“He’s really good with kids,” Sam notes aloud, after a long, laconic moment sipping his limed-up beer. It’s not just Jessie, either. Eileen thinks it’s the cutest thing in the world and drags Cas to the playground in the park whenever she can get her hands on him.</p><p>“Yeah, he kinda is,” Dean notes, chuckling. He crosses his legs and leans an elbow on the inside crease of his knee, looking out over the sand. The corners of his mouth lift, gently, as he watches Cas and Jessie playing. Cas straightens, and he has… wait, that looks like a small bird perched on the top of his head. Jessie applauds, her hand <em>completely </em>forgotten. Okay then. “I guess kids can’t tell he’s weird.”</p><p>Uh-huh. If the look on Dean’s face got any sloppier, they’d need a mop and a bucket to get him back into the car.</p><p>Seriously, still with this bullshit? They’ve saved the world. Sam’s married. He’s got a home. He’s got a family. He’s got a <em>kid. </em>Impossibility stares him in the face every damned day, and he wakes up and smiles to see it.</p><p>Sam Winchester has been through more, in his forty years of life, than most people dream exist.</p><p>With that in mind?</p><p>“You ever going to make an honest angel out of him?” Sam asks, casually. "He's been waiting for you a long time."</p><p>Yeah, enough is enough. Dean needs to climb himself out of that deep, dark Egyptian river he’s spent the past decade and change swimming in and admit—to himself, to the family, to the <em>world</em>—that Cas is it for him. Absolutely <em>no-one</em> cares if Dean’s life partner comes in the shape of a squinty little tax accountant-looking guy who works part-time at the florist shop on Main and kisses little girls’ hands better.</p><p>You know. That particular former angel that, very literally, fell from Heaven. For Dean.</p><p>(Fortunately, Dean’s long since outgrown the phase where he was trying to fuck himself into forgetting all that. Sam’s pretty sure Eileen would stab him if he tried again. She's very fond of Cas.)</p><p>There’s a very long, <em>extremely</em> awkward pause before Dean turns so red Sam honestly wonders if it’s possible to burst a blood vessel from blushing. All of which renders Sam’s tough-guy big brother sputtering and denying until his lips are blue—figuratively, not literally—and clutching at his Corona bottle like it’s grandma’s pearls very, very moot.</p><p>“Oops. Was I not supposed to know you’re in love with him?” Sam says, his tongue firmly in his cheek, and his grin so wide he can feel it tugging at his ears. “Rewind? Maybe tell Cas, first.”</p><p>“I fucking <em>hate you,</em>” Dean groans, and puts his face down into his hands.</p><p>~fin~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Didn't I warn you it was tooth-rotting? 😘 Where's Eileen? Oh, I don't know. She probably figured let them have a Three Men and a Baby day.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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